SUMMER OUTDOOR SCULPTURE TOUR

Enzo Cucchi
Fontana d'Italia, 1993

Enzo Cucchi, one of Italy's most acclaimed artists, unveiled Fontana d'Italia (fountain of Italy) in May of 1993 following five years of planning. A painter and sculptor of the Italian transavanguard movement, Cucchi is best known for his emotive paintings of elongated figures inspired by Christian imagery and early Etruscan Art.

Cucchi envisions vessels and fountains as being at the origin of the sculptural impulse, and bronze as an enduring material for the presentation of a sculptural work. From a crevice in the face of each of the bronze columns, water emerges, trickling down the trunk, to be caught in the granite saucers below. Fontana d'Italia, one of seven fountains by Cucchi, is his first in North America.

This piece, realized in Rome by master-craftsman Livio and Otello Scatolini, was a gift of the artist to York University culminating the relationship between the two, which started in 1989 when Cucchi was an artist-in-residence at the University.